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A UTHOR : 


TOYNBEE,  ARNOLD 
JOSEPH 


TITLE: 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF 


PLACE: 


OXFORD 

DATi:. 

1921 


Master  Negative  # 


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PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 


—Hzi&loArJ3_ 


BIBLIOGRAPHIC  MICROFORM  TARGET 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


W^rmf* 


Toynbee,  Arnold  Joseph,  1889-  1975 

The  tragedy  of  Greece ;  a  lecture  delivered  for  the  pro- 
fessor of  Greek  to  candidates  for  honours  in  literae 
humaniores  at  Oxford  in  May  1920,  by  A.  J.  Toynbee  ... 
Oxford,  The  Clarendon  press,  1921. 

42  p.    18i« 


Restrictions  on  Use: 


\^  Greece— Hist— Addresses,  essays,  lectures.        i.  Title. 


Library  of  Congress 


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FHE   TR  \GEDY 


OF 


GREECE 

(t//  Lecture  delivered  for  th    Professor  of 

Qreek  to  Candidates  for  Honours  in 

Literae  Humaniores  at  Oxford 

in-'May  1920 

BY 

A.  J.  TOYNBEE 


Ipse  Epicurus  obu  dccurso  lumine  vitac, 

QCii  fr^nus  humanurA  ingenro  superavit  et  omni& 

xit,  Stellas  exortus  ut  aetherius  sol. 
Ui  vero  dubiUbis  et  indignabere  obirc  ? 
LucRsnus  iii.  kh^-S- 


1 


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s^ray^g-  >*f  V 


^„_„_.- '^  --■ '  -  ^y--  '■ 


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OXFORD 
\r    THE    CLARENDON     PRESS 


*^|.»S-^*J__* 


1921 


Columbia  Winiomsitp 

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THE    TRAGEDY 

OF 

GREECE 

(i/^  Lecture  delivered  for  the  Professor  of 

Qreek  to  Candidates  for  Honours  in 

Literae  Humaniores  at  Oxford 

in  3Aay  ig20 


BY 


A.  J.  TOYNBEE 


Ipse  Epicurus  obit  decurso  lumine  vitae, 

qui  genus  humanum  ingenio  superavit  et  omuls 

restinxit,  slellas  exortus  ut  aetherius  sol. 

tu  vero  dubitabis  et  indignabcre  obire? 

Lucretius  iii.  1043  5. 


OXFORD 
AT   THE   CLARENDON    PRESS 

1921 


I 


2.  /-  9  ?  ^   y 


OXFORD   UNIVERSITY   PRESS 

LONDON      EDINBURGH      GLASGOW      NEW    YORK 
TORONTO         MELBOURNE        CAPE  TOWN         BOMBAY 

HUMPHREY    MILFORD 

PUBLISHEB   TO  THE   DJJIVKRSITY 


T 


/ 
VJ  u  u 


The  JVork  of  Art 

I  BELIEVE  that  most  of  you  who  are  attendin<ij 
this  course  of  lectures  have  been  studying  Greek 
and  Latin  literature  and  are  now  going  on  to 
study  Greek  history. 

I  dare  say  many  of  you  have  been  thinking  over 
this  change  in  your  studies  and  perhaps  looking 
forward  to  it,  or  regretting  it,  as  the  case  may  be. 
But  this  morning  I  want  to  draw  your  attention 
to  the  continuity  between  the  literary  studies  on 
which  you  have  been  engaged,  some  of  you  for 
a  considerable  number  of  years — at  school  as  well 
as  at  the  University — and  the  historical  studies  on 
which  you  are  embarking.  After  all,  if  names 
have  any  meaning,  '  Literae  Graecae  et  Latinae ' 
(the  official  title  of  Honour  Moderations)  and 
*  Literae  Humaniores '  (the  '  Greats  '  School)  can- 
not really  be  alien  to  each  other.  The  names 
imply  that  your  studies  in  the  local  fields  of  Greek 
;uid  I^tin  literature  have  e(|uipj)ed  you  for  pursu- 
ing the  siime  studies  in  the  widest  field  of  all — 
the  field  of  humanity — and  I  believe  that  this  is 
profoundly  true. 

34M  A   S 


4 


THE  TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE 


Hitherto  you  have  been  studying  a  literature — 
that  is,  through  the  medium  of  language  you  have 
been  studying  creations  of  the  spirit  of  man. 
Now,  through  the  medium  of  this  literature  with 
which  you  have  made  yourselves  familiar,  you  are 
going  to  study  the  greatest  creation  of  the  human 
spirit — a  civilization. 

Civilizations  are  the  greatest  and  the  rarest 
achievements  of  liuman  society.  Innumerable 
societies  have  been  coming  into  being  and  perish- 
ing during  many  hundi-eds  of  thousands  of  yeai-s, 
and  hardlv  any  of  them  have  created  civilizations. 
One  can  count  the  civilizations  on  one's  fingers. 
We  have  had  jjerhaps  three  in  Europe :  the 
Minoan  in  the  Aegean  Islands  (the  dates  4()()()- 
11  (X)  B.C.  roughly  cover  its  history);  the  Greek 
or  Graeco- Roman  round  the  coasts  of  the  Medi- 
terranean (its  history  extends  between  the  eleventh 
century  u.  c.  and  the  seventh  century  a.d.);  and 
our  modern  western  civilization  round  the  coasts 
of  the  Atlantic,  which  Ixigan  to  emerge  from  twi- 
light in  the  eighth  century  a.d.  and  is  still  in 
existence.  Then  there  are  the  ancient  civiliza- 
tions of  Egypt  and  Ix)wer  MesojK)tamia,  which 
were  first  dominated  by  Ancient  Greece  and  then 
amalgamated  into  the  single  Middle  Eastern  civil- 
ization of  Islam  ;  and  there  are  the  civilizations  of 
India  and  China.    Even  if  we  count  as  civilizations 


'I"' 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE 


5 


the  societies  existing  in  Mexico  and  Peru  before 
the  Spanish  Conquest,  the  total  number  of  known 
independent  civilizations,  compared  with  the  total 
number  of  known  human  societies,  is  very  small. 
And  it  is  so  because  the  achievement  is  astonish- 
ingly difficult.  There  are  two  constant  factors  in 
social  life — the  spirit  of  man  and  its  environment.,  / 
Social  life  is  the  relation  between  them,  and  lifej'  / 
only  rises  to  the  height  of  civilization  when  thei 
spirit  of  man  is  the  dominant  partner  in  the  rela- 
tionship— when  instead  of  being  moulded  by  the  I 
enviromnent  (as  it  is  in  the  tropical  forests  of 
Central  Africa  and  Brazil),  or  simply  holding  its 
own  against  the  environment  in  a  kind  of  equili- 
!)rium  (as  it  does  on  the  stepp)es  of  Central  Asia 
or  Arabia,  among  the  nomads),  it  moulds  the 
environment  to  its  own  purpose,  or  'expresses' 
itself  by  '  impressing  '  itself  upon  the  world.  Now 
you  will  see  why  I  have  suggested  that  the  study  of 
a  civilization  is  not  different  in  kind  from  the 
study  of  a  literature.  For  in  both  cases  you  are 
studying  a  creation  of  the  spirit  of  man,  or,  in 
more  familiar  terms,  a  work  of  art. 

Civilization  is  a  work  of  art — in  essence,  I 
Ixilieve,  and  not  merely  by  a  metaphor.  You  may 
say  that  works  of  art  are  made  by  individuals, 
civilization  by  a  society.  But  what  work  of  art 
can   you  think  of  in  which  the  individual  artist 


6 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  GREECE 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  GREECE 


li 


owes  nothing  to  others  ?  And  a  civilization,  the 
work  of  countless  individuals  and  many  genera- 
tions, differs,  I  l)elieve,  in  this  respect  from  a  poem 
or  a  statue  not  in  kind  but  only  in  degree.  It  is 
a  social  work  of  art,  expressed  in  social  action, 
like  a  ritual  or  a  play.  I  cannot  descril)e  it  l)etter 
than  by  calling  it  a  tragedy  with  a  plot,  and 
history  is  the  plot  of  the  tragedy  of  civilization. 

Students  of  the  drama,  from  Aristotle  onwards, 
will  tell  you  that  nearly  all  the  great  tragedies  in 
literature  are  expositions  of  quite  a  few  funda- 
mental plots.  And  I  sus|)ect  that  the  great  trage- 
dies of  history — that  is,  the  great  civilizations  that 
have  been  created  by  the  spirit  of  man — may  all 
reveal  the  same  plot,  if  we  analyse  them  rightly. 
EiU'h  civilization — for  instance,  the  civilization  of 
Mediaeval  and  Modern  Euro|^  and  again  that  of 
Ancient  Greece — is  prolmbly  a  variant  of  a  single 
theme.  And  to  study  the  plot  of  civilization  in 
a  great  exposition  of  it — like  the  Hellenic  exposi- 
tion or  our  own  Western  exposition — is  surely  the 
right  goal  of  a  humane  education. 

But  of  course  one  asks :  Why  study  Ancient 
Hellenic  civilization  rather  than  ours  ?  The  study 
of  any  one  civilization  is  so  complex,  it  demands 
so  many  preliminary  and  subordinate  studies — 
linguistic,  institutional,  economic,  psychological — 
that  it  is  likely  to  absorb  all  one's  energies.     The 


greatest  historians  have  generally  confined  them- 
selves to  the  study  of  a  single  civilization,  and  the 
great  Greek   historians— Herodotus,  Thucydides, 
and  Polybius — concentrated    on    their   own,  and 
only  studied  others  in  so  far  as  their  own  came 
into  contact  with  them.     Clearly,  people  who  are 
going   to  be   historians,  not   for  life,   but  as  an 
education  for  life,  must  make  their  choice.     They 
must  practically  confine  themselves  to  studying 
one  civilization  if  they  are  to  reap  the  fruits  of 
study   at    all,  and   in   this  case   it   is   natural   to 
ask :  Why  study  Hellenism  rather  than  our  own 
history  ^     There   are   two  obvious  arguments  in 
favour   of  studying   modern    history.      It   seems 
more  familiar  and  it  seems  more  useful.     And  I 
am  not  going  to  misrepresent  these  arguments  by 
stating    them    only    in    their   cruder   forms.     By 
"  familiar '  I  do  not  mean  *  easy ',  and  when  I  say 
that    modern    history    seems    more    useful    than 
ancient  I  do  not  mean  that  the  study  of  it  is  a 
closer  approximation  to  a  Pelman  course.     There 
is  an  exceedingly  crude  view  of  education  among 
some  people  just  now — I  think  it  is  largely  due  to 
the  war,  and  I  hope  it  will  disappear  like  other 
ugly  effects  of  the  war — which  inclines  to  concen- 
trate  education    on    applied    chemistry,    say,    or 
engineering,  with  a  vague  idea  that  people  whose 
education  has  been  devoted  to  these  subjects  will 


S46« 


a3 


^ 


8         THE  TRAGEDY   OF  GREECE 

be  more  capable  of  competing  with  foreigners  in 
the    dye    industry    or    of    working    in    munition 
factories   in  the  next  emergency.      In   the  same 
way,  I  dare  say,  concentration  on  modern  history 
might  be  supposed  to  fit  you  for  securing  conces- 
sions   abroad    tor   your    firm,    or    for    winning   a 
parliamentary  election.     Of  course,  this  attitude, 
though  I  believe  it  is  rather  widespread  just  now, 
is  absurd.     I   need   not   labour  that  here.     The 
fallacy  lies  in   confusing  the  general  theoretical 
knowledge   of  a  subject  acquired  through  l)eing 
educated  in  it  with  the  technical  knowledge  and 
personal  experience  which  you  must  have  if  you 
are  to  turn  the  same  subject  to  practical  account 
in  after  life.     There  is  no  dift'erence  of  opinion  on 
this  point  between  'humanists'  and  'scientists'. 
The  issue  is  between  people  w  ho  do  not  appreciate 
the  value  of  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  as  an  end  in 
itself,  and  those  who  do  appreciate  it  and  who 
therefore  understand  what  education  means.    True 
lovers  of  knowledge  and  true  l)elievers  in  educa- 
tion   will    be    found    on    the    same    side    in    this 
controversy,  whether  the  subject  of  their  study 
happens  to  be  the  spirit  of  man  or  the  laws  of 
its   environment.      But    apart    from    that   crude 
utilitarianism,   which   is   as    unscientific  as   it    is 
un-humaiie,    a    serious    argument    for    studying 
modern  rather  than  ancient  history  can  also  be 


THE  TRAGEDY   OF  GREECE  9 

stated  from  the  humane  and  the  scientific  point 
of   view.       It    may    l>e   argued    that    the    direct 
experience  we  have  of  our  own  civilization  makes 
it  possible  for  us  to  have  a  deeper,  and  therefore 
a  more  humane  and  scientific,  understanding  of  it 
than  we  can  ever  have  of  Ancient  Greece.     And 
one    might    go    on    to    argue,    on    grounds    of 
humanism   alone,  that  such  a  comprehension   of 
the  character  and  origins  of  our  civilization  would 
have  a  more  profound  humanizing  inHuence  upon 
its  development  than  a  less  intimate  study  of  a 
different  civilization  could  produce.     This  argu- 
ment is  bound,  I  think,  to  appeal  to  the  generation 
which    has    experienced    the    war.       The    war    is 
obviously  one  of  the  great  crises  of  our  civiliza^ 
tion.     It  is  like  a  conflagration  lighting  up  the 
dim  past  and  throwing  it  into  perspective.     The 
war  makes  it  impossible  for  us  to  take  our  own 
history  for  granted.     We  are   bound   to   inquire 
into  the  causes  of  such  an  astonishing  catastrophe, 
and   as    soon    as    we    do    that   we    find   ourselves 
inquiring  into  the  evolution  of  Western  Civiliza- 
tion since  it  emerged  from  the  Dark  Age.     The 
shock   of  the  Peloponnesian  War  gave  just    the 
same    intellectual    stimulus    to    Thucydides,    and 
made  him  preface  his  history  of  that  war  with  a 
critical   analysis,   brief  but    unsurpassed,    of  the 
origins  of  Hellenic  civilization— the  famous  intro- 

A  4 


10        THE  TRAGEDY   OF  GREECE 

ductory  chapters  of  Book  I.  May  not  these 
chapters  point  the  road  for  us  and  counsel  us  to 
concentrate  upon  the  study  of  our  own  history  ? 

You  see  the  question  deserves  very  serious 
consideration,  not  merely  from  the  utilitarian, 
but  from  the  scientific  and  humane  point  of  n  iew. 
I  am  going  to  suggest  in  answer  four  points  in 
favour  of  studying  the  civilization  of  Ancient 
Greece: 

(i)  In  Greek  history  the  plot  of  civilization  has 

been  worked  out  to  its  conclusion.     We  can  sit  as 

spectators  through  the  whole  play ;    we  can  say : 

*This   or   that    is    the   crisis;    from    this    point 

onwards   the   end   is  inevitable  ;    or  if  this  actor 

had  acted   otherwise   in   those  circumstances   the 

issue  would  not   have   been  the  same.'     We  can 

grasp  the  structure  of  the  tragedy  and  divide  it 

into  acts.     But  in  our  own  history  we  are  like 

players  in  the  middle  of  the  piece,  and  though  we 

may  be  able  to  say  '  This  is  the  third  act  or  the 

fourth  act\  we  caimot  say  *This  is  the  last  act  or 

the  last  but  one  \     We  cannot  foretell  the  future  ; 

the  work  of  art  we  are   studying  is  incomplete, 

and  therefore  we  cannot  |)ossibly  apprehend  it  as 

an    artistic    whole,    however   vivid    may    be    our 

experience  of  isolated  scenes  and  situations. 

(ii)  My  first  point,  then,  in   favour  of  Greek 
history  is  its  completeress  and  its  true  persj)ective 


n' 


THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE        11 


from  our  point  of  view.  My  second  is  that  the 
historical  experience  of  the  Greeks  has  been  more 
finely  expressed  than  ours.  Its  expression  is  in 
all  Greek  art  and  literature — for  do  not  make  the 
mistake  of  supposing  that  historical  experience  is 
expressed  in  so-called  historical  records  alone. 
The  great  poets  of  Greece  whom  you  have  been 
studying  hitherto  will  be  of  as  much  assistance  to 
you  in  understanding  the  mental  history  of  Greece 
(which  is  atler  all  the  essential  element  in  any 
history)  as  the  philosophers  and  historians  whom 
you  are  going  to  study  now.  And  Greek  historical 
exj>erience  or  mental  history  is  better  expressed 
in  Greek  literature  than  ours  is  in  the  literature 
of  modern  Europe.  I  am  not  attempting  to 
compare  the  two  literatures  as  literatures,  but 
I  do  say  with  some  confidence  that  the  surviving 
masterpieces  of  Greek  literature  which  vou  have 
been  studying  give  you  a  better  insight  into 
the  subjective  side  of  Greek  history — into  the 
emotions  and  sjxiculations  wliich  arose  out  of  the 
vicissitudes  of  Greek  society  and  were  its  most 
splendid  creations — than  any  insight  into  the 
subjective  side  of  modern  history  which  you  can 
obtain  by  studying  it  through  modern  literature, 
(iii)  My  third  point  is  expressed  in  the  conclud- 
ing phrase  of  Aristotle's  definition  of  tragedy 
(Poetics,  vi.  2).     '  Tragedy  \  he  says,  '  is  an  imita- 


12        THE  TRAGEDY   OF  GREECE 


tion  of  an  action  that  is  serious,  complete,  and  of 
a  certain  magnitude  .  .  .  through  pity  and  fear 
effecting  the  proper    KaBapcn^^  or  purgation,  of 
these    emotions/     (Butchers    translation.)     This 
word  KaOapcTL^ — purgation,  purification,  cleansing, 
discharge — has  been  the  subject  of  interminable 
controversy  among  scholars,  but  I  think  any  one 
acquainted  with  Ancient  Greek  literature  who  has 
lived   through  the   war   will  understand   what  it 
means.     Certainly  I  found,  in  the  worst  moments 
of  the  war,  that  passages  from  the  classics — some 
line  of  Aeschylus  or  Lucretius  or  Virgil,  or  the 
sense  of  some  speech  in  Thucydides,  or  the  impres- 
sion of  some  mood  of  bitterness  or  serenity  in  a 
dialogue  of  Plato — would  come  into  my  mind  and 
give  me  relief.     I  felt  that  these  men  had  travelled 
along  the  road  on  which  our  feet  were  set ;  that 
they  had  travelled  it  farther  than  we,  travelled  it 
to    the   end ;    and   that   the    wisdom    of  greater 
experience  and  the  poignancy  of  greater  suffering 
than   ours   was  expressed  in  the  beauty  of  their 
words.     Personally  I  got  that  relief  from  acquain- 
tance with  Greek  civilization  as  expressed  in  Greek 
literature,  and  I  got  it  because  it  put  me  in  com- 
munication with  a  different  civilization  from  our 
own — with  people  who   had  experienced   all  and 
more  than  we  had  experienced,  and  who  were  now 
at  peace  beyond  the  world  of  time  and  change. 


\ 


'1^ 


rHE  TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE       13 


(iv)  KdOap(n9  seems  to  me  the  emotional  value 
which  is  peculiar  to  the  study  of  a  different  civil- 
ization, and  which  you  cannot  get,  at  any  rate  with 
the  same  intensity,  by  the  study  of  your  own. 
And  this  emotional  value  has  its  intellectual 
counterpart  in  the  comparative  method  of  study, 
which  you  get  by  studying,  not  your  own  circum- 
stances, but  circiun stances  comparable  to,  without 
being  identical  with,  your  own.  This  is  a  common- 
place in  the  field  of  language.  The  study  of 
Ancient  Greek  is  generally  admitted  to  have  more 
educative  value  for  an  Englishman  than  the  study 
of  modern  French  or  German,  because  Greek  and 
English  embody  the  fundamental  principles  of 
human  language  in  entirely  independent  forms  of 
expression,  while  French  and  English,  in  addition 
to  the  elements  common  to  all  language,  share  the 
special  background  of  the  Bible  and  the  Classics, 
which  have  given  them  an  extensive  common  stock 
of  phraseology  and  imagery.  This  applies  equally 
to  the  study  of  civilization.  One  learns  more  by 
studying  Ancient  Greek  religion  and  comparing  it 
with  Christianity  than  by  studying  Christianity  in 
ignorance  of  other  religious  phenomena ;  and  one 
learns  more  about  institutions  by  studying  the 
Greek  city-state  and  comparing  it  with  the  modern 
national  state  than  by  merely  studying  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  national  state  in  modern  Europe.     If 


14        THE   TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE 

we  take  utility  to  mean  intellectual  and  not 
praictical  utility — and  as  humanists  and  scientists 
we  do — we  may  claim  without  paradox  that  the 
study  of  Greek  civilization  is  valuable  just  because 
it  is  not  our  own. 

These,  then,  are  my  four  points  in  favour  of 
Greek  history  :  we  possess  the  whole  tragedy,  it  is 
a  magnificent  expression  of  the  plot,  and  it  has 
a  peculiar  emotional  and  intellectual  value  which 
the  drama  in  which  we  ourselves  are  actors  cannot 
have  for  us. 

In  the  reniainder  of  the  time  at  my  disposal 
I  propose  to  give  a  sketch  of  the  plot  of  Greek 
history — every  one  must  make  his  own  sketch; 
I  offer  mine  to  provoke  you  to  make  yours — and 
I  shall  then  try  to  illustrate  my  second  point,  the 
beauty  of  the  expression,  by  quoting  half  a  dozen 
passages  from  ancient  authors.  The  other  two 
points — the  cathartic  and  the  comparative  value 
of  Greek  history — are  matters  of  personal  ex|)eri- 
ence.  I  have  little  doubt  that  you  will  experience 
them  yourselves  in  your  studies  during  the  next 
two  years. 


''I'* 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE        15 

II 

The  riot 

The  genesis  of  Ancient  Greek  civilization  is 
certainly  later  than  the  twelfth  century  b.c.,  when 
Minoan  civilization,  its  predecessor,  was  still  in 
process  of  dissolution;  and  the  termination  of 
Ancient  Greek  civilization  must  certainly  be  placed 
before  the  eighth  century  a.d.,  when  modern AVestern 
civilization,  its  successor,  had  ali*eady  come  into 
being.  Between  these  extreme  points  we  cannot 
exactly  date  its  l)egiiniing  and  end,  but  we  can  see 
that  it  covers  a  period  of  seventeen  or  eighteen 
centuries. 

It  is  easier  to  divide  the  tragedy  into  acts.  We 
can  at  once  discern  two  dramatic  crises — the  out- 
break of  the  Feloponnesian  War  and  the  foundation 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  We  can  for  convenience 
take  precise  dates-  431  h.c.  and  31  b.c— and 
group  the  action  into  three  acts  or  phases,  one 
before,  one  between,  and  one  after  these  critical 
moments. 

I  will  give  you  my  analysis  in  tabular  form  : 

^c^/(llthcent.-431  b.c). 

1.  Synoikismos  (formation  of  the  city-state,  the 
cell  of  Greek  society),  11th  ccnt.-750  b.c. 

A  5 


-w 


16        THE  TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE 

2.  Colonization  (propeigation  of  the  citv-state 

round  the  Mediterranean),  750-600  b.c. 

3.  Economic  revolution  (change  from  extensive 

to  intensive  growth),  600-500  b.c. 

4.  Confederation  (repulse  of  Oriental  universal 

empire  and  creation  of  an  inter-state 
federation, the  Delian  League), 500-431  b.c. 

Act  //(431  B.C.-31  B.C.). 

1.  The    Greek     wars    (failure     of    inter-state 

federation),  431-355  b.c. 
^l.  The  Oriental  wars  (the  superman,  conquest 

of  the  East,  struggle  for  the  spoils,  har- 

barian  invasion),' 355-272  b.c 

3.  The   first  rally  (change  of  scale  and   fresh 

experiments  in  federation — Seleucid  Asia, 
Roman  Italy,  Aetolian  and  Achaean 
'  United  States'),  272-218  b.c 

4.  The  Roman  wars  (destruction  of  four  great 

powers  by  one ;  devastation  of  tlie  Medi- 
terranean world),  218-146  b.c 

5.  The     class     wars    (capitalism,     lx)lshevism, 

Napoleonism),  146-31  b.c. 

Jet  III  (SI  B.c-7th  cent.  a.d.). 

1.  The  second  rally  (final  experiment  in  federa- 
tion —  compromise  between  city  -  state 
autonomy  and  capitalistic  centralization), 

31  B.C-A.D.  180. 


I 


A 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE        17 

2.  The  first  dissolution  (external  front  broken 

by  tribesmen,  internal  by  Christianity), 
A.D.180-284  . 

3.  The     final     rally    (Constantine    rbv    Srj/iou 

TT/Doo-eraiptYef— tribesmen  on  to  the  land, 
bishops  into  the  bureaucracy),  a.d.  284- 
378. 

4.  The   final   dissolution    (break    of  tradition) 

A.  D.  378-7th  cent. 

This  analysis  is  and  must  be  subjective.  Everv 
one  ha.s  to  make  his  own,  just  as  every  one  has  to 
apprehend  for  himself  the  form  of  a  work  of  art. 
But  however  you  may  analyse  the  plot  and  group  it 
into  acts,  I  want  to  insist  that  the  action  is  con- 
tinuous, and  that  the  first  emergence  of  the  Greek 
city-state  in  the  Aegean  and  the  last  traces  of 
municipal  self-government  in  the  Roman  Empire 
are  phases  in  the  history  of  a  single  civilization. 
This  civilization  as  a  whole  is  the  subject  of  your 
historical  studies  in  Literae  Humaniores  ;  I  may 
remind  you  that  in  your  final  schools  one  paper 
out  of  three  is  allotted  to  the  general  field  of 
*  Ancient  History ' ;  but  there  is  a  danger  of  the 
unity  of  your  studies  being  obscured  by  the  per- 
haps undue  concentration  of  the  '  Greats '  course 
upon  two  'special  periods',  isolated  from  each 
other    chronologically,    and    entitled    respectively 

a6 


I 


'.  NBKSAAlllAVtU^ 


18        THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE 

a  special  |)eriiKl  of '  Greek ''  and  a  special  period  of 
*  Roman  "*  history.     I    want  to  warn   you  against 
being  misled  by  this  division.     Your  studies  of 
Greek  and  Latin  literature  have  no  doubt  con- 
vinced you  that  the  difference  of  language  there  is 
less  significant  than  the  unity  of  form,  and  that 
you  are   really   dealing    with  one  literature,  the 
Hellenic,    which    in    many    of  its    branches    was 
imitated  and  proptigated  in  the  Latin  language, 
just  as  it  was  to  a  lesser  extent  in  Hebrew,   or 
later  on  in  Syriac  and  Arabic,  in  certain  branches 
such  as  theology  and  science.     I  wish  to  suggest 
to  you  that  the  unity  is  even  more  apparent  when, 
instead  of  confining  our  attention  to  literature,  we 
regard  the  whole  field  of  civilization.    You  cannot 
reallv  draw  a  distinction  between  Greek  history 
and  Roman  history.     At  most  you  can  say  that 
at  some  point  Greek  history  enters  on  a  phase 
which  it  may  be  convenient  to  distinguish  verbally 
by  connecting  it  with  the  name  of  Rome.     Take 
the  case  of  the  Roman  Empire— you  may  possibly 
have  been  surprised  that  1  have  taken  the  Roman 
Empire  as  the  third  act  in  the  tragedy  of  Greece ; 
vet  when  you  study  the  Empire  you  find  that  it 
was  essentially  a  Greek  institution.     Institution- 
ally it  was  at  lx)ttom  a  federation  of  city-states, 
a  solution  of  the    political  problem  with  which 
Greek  society  had  been  wrestling  since  the  fifth 


* 


THE  TRAGEDY   OF  GREECE        19 

century,  b.  c.  And  even  the  non-nmnicipal  ele- 
ment, the  centralized  bureaucratic  organization 
which  Augustus  spread  like  a  fine,  almost  impal- 
pable net  to  hold  his  federation  of  municipalities 
together,  was  largely  a  fruit  of  Greek  administra- 
tive experience.  As  papyrology  reveals  the 
administrative  system  of  the  Ptolemaic  Dynasty — 
the  Greek  successors  of  Alexander  who  preceded 
the  Caesars  in  the  government  of  Egypt — we  are 
learning  that  even  those  institutions  of  the  Empire 
which  have  been  regarded  as  most  un-Greek  may 
have  been  borrowed  through  a  Greek  intermediary. 
Lnperial  jurisprudence,  again,  interpreted  Roman 
municipal  law  into  the  law  of  a  civilization  by 
reading  into  it  the  principles  of  Greek  moral 
philosophy.  And  Greek,  not  Latin,  was  still  the 
language  in  which  most  of  the  greatest  literature 
of  the  Imperial  period  was  written.  I  need  only 
mention  works  which  are  still  widely  read  and 
which  have  influenced  our  own  civilization — 
Plutarch's  Lives,  Marcus  Aurelius'  Meditations, 
and  the  New  Testament.  They  are  all  written  in 
Greek,  and  who  will  venture  to  assert  that  the 
age  in  which  they  were  written  falls  outside  Greek 
history,  or  that  the  social  experience  which  pro- 
duced them  was  not  an  act  in  the  tragedy  of 
Hellenic  civilization  ?  Even  statistically  the 
Empire    was    more   Greek    than    anything   else. 


20 


THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE 


Prolmbly  A  considerable  nmjonty  of  its  iiihabitantb 
spoke  Greek  as  a  lingua  franca,  if  not  as  their 
mother-tongue.  Nearly  all  tlie  great  industrial 
and  connnercial  centres  were  in  the  Greek  or 
Ilellenized  provinces.  Possibly,  during  the  first 
two  centuries  of  the  Empire,  more  Greek  was 
spoken  than  Latin  by  the  proletariat  of  Rome 
itself.  The  Greek  core  of  the  Ronuui  Empire 
played  the  part  of  Western  Europe  in  the  nKxlern 
world.  The  Latinized  provinces  were  thinly 
populated,  backward,  and  only  suj)erficially 
initiated  into  the  fraternity  of  civilization. 
l^tinize<l  Spain  and  Africa  were  the  South 
America,  Liitinized  Gaul  and  Britain  the  Russia 
of  the  Ancient  Greek  world.  The  pulse  of  the 
Empire  was  driven  by  a  Greek  heart,  and  it  beat 
companiUvely  feebly  in  the  non-Greek  extremities. 


Ill 


IVfC  Eocpression 

And  now  that  I  have  explained  my  reading  of 
the  plot,  I  will  let  the  actors  speak  for  themselves. 
1  can  only  quote  half  a  dozen  passages,  but  I  have 
chosen  them  to  illustrate  the  critical  scenes  and 
situations  in  the  drama  as  I  have  sketched  it  out, 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE 


21 


and  I  hope  they  will  convince  you  that  there  is 
something  to  be  said  for  my  interpretation. 

I  shall  not  dwell  on  the  period  I  have  called  the 
first  act — that  is,  the  period  before  431  b.  c.  But 
I  recommend  you,  again,  not  to  lay  aside  your 
poets  when  you  take  up  your  historians.  Homer 
will  reveal  to  you  more  of  the  opening  scenes  than 
Herodotus  ;  and  the  exaltation  of  spirit  produced 
by  the  repulse  of  the  Persians,  and  expressed 
institutionally  in  the  foundation  of  the  Delian 
League,  can  hardly  be  realized  emotionally  without 
the  poetry  of  Aeschylus.  But  the  philosophers 
and  scientists  are  indispensable  too.  Read  Pro- 
fessor Burners  Early  Greek  Philosophy^  or  his 
Greek  Philosophy  from  Thales  to  Plato,  for  your 
history  as  well  as  for  your  theory  of  knowledge. 
And  read  the  little  work  on  *  Atmospheres,  Waters, 
and  Localities  '  emanating  from  the  Hippokratean 
school  of  medicine.  It  is  only  thirty-eight  pages 
in  the  Teubner  text  (Hip{)ocratis  Opera,  vol.  i), 
and  you  will  find  in  it  a  clearer  expression  than  in 
Heroclotus  of  the  fifth-century  scientific  point  of 
view.  I  will  quote  you  one  passage  which  might 
have  been  written  in  Victorian  England.  The 
writer  is  describing  a  peculia''  disease  prevalent 
among  the  nomads  of  southern  Russia.  'The 
natives',  he  remarks,  'believe  that  this  disease  is 
sent  by  God,  and  they  reverence  and  worship  its 


22 


THE  TRAGEDY   OF  GREECE 


'!■* 


THE  TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE 


23 


victims,  in  fear  of  boin«r  stricken  by  it  themselves. 
I  too  am  quite  ready  to  admit  that  these  pheno- 
mena are  caused  by  God,  but  I  take  the  same 
view  about  all  phenomena  and  hold  that  no  single 
phenomenon  is  more  or  less  divine  in  origin  than 
any  other.  All  are  uniform  and  all  may  1k» 
divine,  but  each  phenomenon  obeys  a  law,  and 
natural  law  knows  no  exceptions.' 

It  is  hard  to  leave  this  first  act  of  the  tragedy. 
It  is  a  triumph  of  youth,  and  the  phrase  in  which 
Herodotus  sums  up  the  early  history  of  Sparta 
expresses  the  prevailing  spirit  of  early  Hellenic 
civilization.  'Avd  re  tSpa^ov  kol  ivO^vrfdrjaav -. 
'  They  shot  up  and  throve.'  But  there  is  another 
phrase  in  Herodotus  which  announces  the  second 
act — an  ominous  phrase  which  came  so  natural  to 
him  that  one  may  notice  about  a  dozen  instances 
of  it  in>is  history.  "ES^l  yap  t(o  Sciua  yfufaOai 
KaKm :  '  Evil  had  to  befall  so-and-so,  and  there- 
fore '—the  story  of  a  catastrophe  follows  in  each 
case.  The  thought  behind  the  phrase  is  expressed 
in  Solon's  wonls  to  Croesus  (Herodotus,  Bk.  I,  ch. 
32):  'Croesus,  I  know  that  God  is  ever  envious 
and  disordering'  (rapax^Sf?),  'and  you  ask  me 
about  the  destiny  of  man  ! ' 

Note  the  epithet  I  have  translated  'disordering'; 
we  sliall  meet  the  word  rapaxv  again.  It  is  the 
bitter  plu-ase    of  a   man   who  lived  on  from  the 


^ 


great  age  into  the  war,  but  not  so  bitter  as 
the  truth  which  the  writer  could  not  brinjr  himself 
wholly  to  express.  '  No  single  phenomenon  ',  as 
contemporary  Greek  science  realized,  '  is  more  or 
less  divine  than  any  other',  and  the  'envious 
and  disordering'  power,  which  wi-ecked  Greek 
civilization,  was  not  an  external  force,  but  the 
very  spirit  of  man  by  which  that  civilization  had 
Ix'en  created.  There  is  a  puzzling  line  in  Homer 
which  is  applied  once  or  twice  to  featurcs  in  a 
landscape— for  instance,  to  a  river :  '  The  gods  call 
it  Xanthos,  mankind  Skamandros.'  So  we  might 
say  of  the  downfall  of  Greece :  the  Greeks  attri- 
buted it  to  the  malignity  of  God,  but  the  divine 
oracles  gave  a  different  answer. 

Why  did  the  Confederacy  of  Delos  break  down 
and  Greece  lose  her  youth  in  a  ruinous  war.? 
Because  of  the  evil  in  the  hearts  of  men— the 
envy  aroused  by  the  political  and  commercial 
greatness  of  Athens  in  the  governing  classes  of 
Sparta  and  Corinth  ;  and  the  covetousness  aroused 
by  sudden  greatness  in  the  Athenians,  tempting 
their  statesmen  to  degrade  the  presidency  of  a  free 
confederacy  into  a  dominion  of  Athens  over  Greece, 
and  tempting  the  Athenian  proletariat,  and  the 
proletariat  in  the  confederate  states,  to  misuse 
democracy  for  the  exploitation  of  the  rich  by  the 
poor.      Envy   and   covetousness    begat    injustice, 


\. 


^*S|!p^^j"'::! 


24 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  GREECE 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  GREECE 


25 


and  injustice  disloyalty.  The  city-states,  in  their 
rivalry  for  dominion  or  their  I'esentnient  against 
the  domineering  of  one  state  over  another,  forgot 
their  loyalty  to  the  common  weal  of  Greece  and 
fought  each  other  for  empire  or  liberty.  And  the 
wealthy  and  well-born  citizena  forgot  their  loyalty 
to  the  city  in  their  blind,  rancorous  feud  against 
the  proletariat  that  was  stripping  them  of  property 
and  power,  and  betrayed  their  community  to  foreign 
enemies. 

'  Strange  how  mortals  blame  the  gods.  They 
say  that  evil  is  our  handiwork,  when  in  truth 
they  bring  their  sufferings  on  themselves.  By 
their  own  folly  they  force  the  hand  of  fate.  See, 
now,  how  Aigisthos  forced  it  in  taking  the  wedded 
wife  of  Atreides  and  slaying  her  lord  when  he 
returned,  yet  he  had  sheer  destruction  l)efore  his 
eyes,  for  we  ourselves  had  forewarned  him  not  to 
slay  the  king  nor  wed  his  wife,  or  vengeance  would 
come  by  Atreides**  son  Orestes,  whene'er  he  should 
grow  to  manhood  and  long  for  his  home.  So  spake 
our  messenger,  but  he  did  not  soften  the  heaii:  of 
Aigisthos,  though  he  wished  him  well,  and  now 
Aigisthos  has  paid  in  full '  (Odyssey,  a  32-43). 

These  lines  from  the  first  canto  of  the  Odyssey 
were  imagined  by  a  generation  which  could  still 
afford  to  en*,  but  as  Greece  approached  her  hour 
of  destiny,  her  prophetic  inspiration  grew  clearer. 


•9 


The  poets  of  the  sixth  century  were  haunted  mort! 
insistently  than  the  Homeridai  by  the  possibilities 
of  disaster  inherent  in  success  of  every  kind — in 
personal  prosperity,  in  military  victory,  and  in  the 
social  triumph  of  civilization.  They  traced  the 
mischief  to  an  aberration  of  the  human  s[)irit 
under  the  shock  of  sudden,  unexp)ected  attain- 
ment, and  they  realized  that  both  the  accumulated 
achievement  of  generations  and  the  greater  promise 
of  the  future  might  be  lost  irretrievably  by  failui-e 
at  this  critical  moment.  '  Surfeit  (/f6poy)  breeds  sin 
(tz/Spfy)  when  prosperity  visits  unbalanced  minds."* 
In  slightly  different  words,  the  proverb  recurs  in 
the  collections  of  verses  attributed  to  Theognis 
and  to  Solon.  Its  maker  refrained  from  adding 
what  was  in  his  and  his  hearers'*  thoughts,  that 
vppi?r  once  engendered,  breeds  drr] — the  complete 
and  certain  destruction  into  which  the  sinner 
walks  with  unseeing  eyes.  But  the  whole  moral 
mystery,  to  its  remorseless  end,  was  uttered  again 
and  again  in  passionate  words  by  Aeschylus,  who 
consciously  discarded  the  primitive  magicid  deter- 
minism in  which  Herodotus  atlterwards  vainly 
sought  relief. 

(ovaav  kv  kukoi?  Pporiov 

VpplV    TOT      rj    TOO  ,    on    TO    KVpiOV    flOATf 
(f>d0S    TOKOV, 


"IS^^SSaf  S 


26 


THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE 


Saifiovd  T*  eray,  dfia^ov.i  diroXefioUy 
dvUpov  Opdaos,  fifXai- 
va^  fjL€\dOpoi(riy  "Arasy 

^ISofiiva?    TOK^VCTLV. 

But  Old  Sin  loves,   when  comes  the  hour  again, 

To  bring  forth  New, 
Which  laugheth  lusty  amid  the  tears  of  men ; 
Yea,  and  Unruth,  his  comrade,  wherewith  none 
May  plead  nor  strive,  which  dareth  on  and  on. 

Knowing  not  fear  nor  any  holy  thing; 
Two  fires  of  darkness  in  a  house,  born  true, 

Like  to  their  ancient  spring. 

{Agavwmnon,,  vv.  7(53  71, 

Mun'ay's  translation.) 

The  poet  of  the  crowning  victory  over  Pei*sia 
was  filled  with  awe,  as  well  as  exultation,  at  the 
possibilities  for  good  or  evil  which  his  triumphant 
generation  held  in  their  hands.  Were  thev  true 
metal  or  base  ?  The  times  would  test  them,  but 
he  had  no  doubt  about  the  inexorable  law. 

Ov  yap  (OTiu  €waX^L9 

ttXovtov  npo?  Kopov  duSpl 

XaKTio'atn'L  p.iyav  Slkt}^ 
ffoyfiou  e/y  d<j>dv€Lav. 

Never  shall  state  nor  gold 
Shelter  his  heart  fn)m  aching 

Whoso  the  Altar  of  Justice  old 
Spumeth  to  night  unwaking. 

(Agarrwmiion,  vv.  381-4, 

Murray's  translation). 


THE  TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE^     27 

The  Agamemnon  was  written  when  Athens 
stood  at  the  height  of  her  gli>ry  and  her  power, 
and  l)efore  her  sons,  following  the  devices  of  their 
hearts,  'like  a  boy  chasing  a  winged  bird,'  had 
set  a  fatal  stumbling-block  in  the  way  of  their 
city,  or  smirched  her  with  an  intolerable  stain. 
The  generation  of  Marathon  foreboded  the 
catastrophe  of  the  Peloponnesian  War,  yet  the 
shock,  when  it  came,  was  beyond  their  powers 
of  imagination,  and  the  effect  of  it  on  the  mind 
of  Greece  was  first  expressed  by  the  generation 
which  was  smitten  bv  the  war  in  eiirly  manhood. 
I  will  quote  Thucydides  (iii.  82) : 

*So  the  class-war  at  Korkyra  grew  more  and 
more  savage,  and  it  made  a  particular  impression 
lK?cause  it  was  the  first  outbreak  of  an  upheaval 
that  spread  in  time  through  almost  the  whole  of 
Greek  society.  In  every  state  there  were  conflicts 
of  class,  and  the  leaders  of  the  respective  parties 
now  procured  the  intervention  of  the  Athenians  or 
the  Lakedaimonians  on  their  side.  In  i)eace-time 
thev  would  have  had  neither  the  opportunity  nor 
the  inclination  to  call  in  the  foreigner,  but  now 
there  was  the  war,  and  it  was  easy  for  any  party  of 
violence  to  get  their  opponents  crushed  and  them- 
selves into  power  by  an  alliance  with  one  of  the 
belligerents.  This  recrudescence  of  class-war 
brought    one    calamity    after   another    Uj)on    the 


28 


THE  TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE 


states  of  Greece — calamities  that  (xrcur  and  will 
continue  to  occur  as  long  as  human  nature  remains 
what  it  is,  however  thev  mav  be  modified  or 
occasionally  mitigated  by  changes  of  circumstance. 
Under  the  favourable  conditions  of  peace-time, 
communities  and  individuals  do  not  have  their 
hands  forced  by  the  logic  of  events,  and  can  there- 
fore act  up  to  a  higher  standard.  But  war  strips 
away  all  the  margins  of  ordinary  life  and  breaks  in 
character  to  circumstance  by  its  brutal  training. 
So  the  states  were  torn  by  the  class- war,  and  the 
sensation  made  by  each  outbreak  had  a  sinister 
effect  on  the  next — in  fact,  there  was  something 
like  a  competition  in  perfecting  the  fine  art  of 
conspiracies  and  atrwities.  .  .  . 

(iii.  83)  *Thus  the  class- war  plunged  Greek 
society  into  every  kind  of  moral  evil,  and  honesty, 
which  is  the  chief  constituent  of  idealism,  was 
laughed  out  of  existence  in  the  prevailing  atmo- 
sphere of  hostility  and  suspicion.  No  argument 
was  cogent  enough  and  no  pledge  solemn  enough 
to  reconcile  opponents.  The  only  argument  that 
appealed  to  the  party  momentarily  in  power  was 
the  unlikelihood  of  their  remaining  there  long  and 
the  consequent  advisability  of  taking  no  risks  with 
their  enemies.  And  the  stupider  the  conjbatants, 
the  greater  their  chances  of  survival,  just  because 
they  were  terrified  at  their  deficiencies,  expected  to 


THE  TRAGEDY   OF  GREECE       29 

l3e  outwitted  and  outmanceuvred  by  their  opponents, 
and  therefore  plunged  recklessly  into  action,  while 
their  superiors  in  intellect,  who  trusted  to  their  wits 
to  protect  them  and  disdained  practical  precau- 
tions, were  often  caught  defenceless  and  brought 
to  destruction.' 

There  you  have  the  effect  of  the  great  Greek 
war  upon    the   first  generation.     Thucydides,   of 
course,  had  a  sensitive  and  emotional  tempera- 
ment.   He  is  always  controlling  himself  and  reining 
himself  in.     But  one  is  struck  by  an  outburst  of 
the  same  feeling  in  a  younger  man,  Xenophon, 
who  was  ordinarily  in  harmony  with  his  age  and 
was    probably    rather    unimaginative    and    self- 
complacent    by    nature.      The    war    had    given 
Xenophon    his   opportunity   as   a  soldier  and  a 
writer.     He  was  not  inclined  to  quarrel  with  the 
'envious  and  disordering'  powers  that  had  ruined 
Greek  civilization.     But  in  the  last  paragraph  of 
the  History  of  his  Own  Times  he  is  carried  away,  for 
he  has  just  been  describing  the  battle  of  Mantinea 
(362  B.C.),  in  which  he  had  lost  his  son. 

'The  result  of  the  battle',  he  writes,  'dis- 
appointed every  one's  expectations.  Almost  the 
whole  of  Greece  had  mobilized  on  one  side  or  the 
other,  and  it  was  taken  for  granted  that  if  it  came 
to  an  action,  the  victors  would  Ixi  able  to  do  what 
they  likwl  and  the  vanquished  would  be  at  their 


30        THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE 

mercy.  But  Providence  so  disposed  it  that  both 
sides  .  .  .  claimed  the  victory  and  yet  neither  had 
gained  a  foot  of  territory,  a  single  city  or  a 
particle  of  power  beyond  what  they  had  possessed 
before  the  battle.  On  the  contrary,  there  was 
more  unsettlement  and  disorder  (rapax'?)  i"  Greece 
after  the  battle  than  before  it.  But  I  do  not 
propose  to  carry  my  narrative  further  and  will 
leave  the  sequel  to  any  other  historian  who  cares  to 
record  it.'     {HeUenka^  vii.  5  fin.). 

I  must  refrain  from  quoting  Plato,  but  I  would 
recommend  you,  while  studying  his  metaphysics 
for  your  philosophy,  to  note  his  moods  and 
emotions  for  the  light  they  throw  upon  the  history 
of  his  lifetime.  Plato's  long  life— 428  to  347  b.c— 
practically  coincided  with  the  first  phase  of  the 
second  act  of  the  tragedy— the  series  of  wars  that 
began  in  431  b.c,  and  that  had  reduced  the  Greek 
city-states  to  complete  disunion  and  exhaustion  by 
355.  Plato  belonged  to  the  cultured  governing 
class  which  was  hit  hardest  by  these  first  disasters. 
At  the  age  of  twenty-nine,  after  witnessing  the 
downfall  of  Athens,  he  had  to  witness  the  judicial 
murder  of  Sok rates — the  greatest  man  of  the  older 
generation,  who  had  been  appreciated  and  loved 
by  Plato  and  his  friends.  Plato's  own  most 
promising  pupil,  whom  he  had  marked  out  for  his 
successor,    was  killed   in  action   in  a  particularly 


THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE       31 

aimless  recrudescence  of  the  war.  Plato's  political 
disillusionment  and  perversity  are  easy  to  under- 
stand. But  it  is  curious  and  interesting  to  watch 
the  clash  between  his  political  bitterness  and  his 
intellectual  serenity.  In  the  intellectual  and 
artistic  sphere— as  a  writer,  musician,  mathema- 
tician, metaphysician — he  stood  consciously  at  the 
zenith  of  Greek  history ;  but  whenever  he  turned 
to  politics  he  seems  to  have  felt  that  the  spring 
had  gone  out  of  the  year.  He  instinctively  ante- 
dated the  setting  of  his  dialogues.  The  characters 
nearly  all  belong  to  the  generation  of  Sok  rates, 
which  had  grown  to  manhood  Ixifore  the  war  and 
whose  memories  conjured  up  the  glory  that  the 
war  had  extinguished.  Note  his  '  other- worldli- 
ness',  for  it  is  a  feature  that  comes  into  Greek 
civilization  with  him  and  gradually  permeates  it. 
He  turns  from  science  to  theology,  from  the  world 
of  time  and  change  to  the  world  of  archetypes  or 
idea.s.  He  turns  from  the  social  religion  of  the 
city-state  to  a  personal  religion  for  which  he  takes 
symbols  from  primitive  mythology.  He  turns 
from  politics  to  Utopias.  But  Plato  only  lived  to 
see  the  first  |)hase  of  the  catastrophe.  As  we 
watch  the  remainder  of  this  second  act — those 
four  terrible  centuries  that  followed  the  year 
431  B.(:. — there  come  tidings  of  calamity  after 
lalamity,  like  the  messages  of  disaster  in  the  Book 


32 


THE  TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE 


of  Job,  and  as  the  world  crumbles,  people  tend 
more  and  more  to  lay  up  their  treasure  elsewhere. 
In  the  Laws^  Plato  places  his  utopia  no  farther  away 
than  Crete.  Two  centuries  later  the  followers  of 
Aristonikos  the  Bolshevik,  outlawed  by  the  cities 
of  Greece  and  Asia,  proclaim  themselves  citizens  of 
the  City  of  the  Sun.  Two  centuries  later  still,  the 
followers  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  despairing  of  this 
world,  pray  for  its  destruction  by  fire  to  make  way 
for  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

Plato's  state  of  mind  gives  you  the  atmosphere 
of  the  first  phase  after  the  catastrophe.  For  the 
second  phase — the  concpiest  of  the  East  and  the 
struggle  for  the  spoils— I  will  refer  you  to 
Mr.  Edwyn  Bevan's  Lectures  on  the  Stoics  ami 
Sceptics  and  to  Professor  Gilbert  Murray's  Conway 
Memorial  lecture  on  The  Stoic  Philosophy.  They 
show  you  a  system  of  philosophy  which  is  no 
longer  a  pure  product  of  speculation  but  is 
primarily  a  moral  shelter  erected  hastily  to  meet 
the  storms  of  life.  For  the  third  phase— the 
rally  of  civilization  in  the  middle  of  the  third 
century  b.c. — I  will  simply  refer  you  to  Plutarch's 
lives  of  the  Spartan  kings  Agis  and  Kleomenes, 
and  if  you  read  them  I  think  you  will  feel  the 
gallantry  of  this  rally  and  the  pathos  of  its  failure. 
And  then  comes  the  fourth  phase — the  Roman 
wars  against  the  other  great  powers  of  the  Medi- 


'^i^ 


THE  TRAGEDY    OF  GREECE       33 

terranean  world.  The  Hannibalic  war  in  Italy  was, 
I  should  imagine,  the  most  terrible  war  that  there 
has  ever  l>een,  not  excepting  the  recent  war  in 
Europe.  The  horror  of  that  war  haunted  later 
generations,  and  its  mere  memory  made  oblivion 
seem  a  desirable  release  from  an  intolerable  world. 

Nil  igitur  mors  est  nobis  neque  pertinet  hilum, 
(|uandot|uidem  natura  animi  mortalis  habetur. 
et  velut  anteacto  nil  tempore  sensimus  aegri, 
ad  confligendum  venientibus  undique  Poenis, 
omnia  cum  belli  trepido  concussa  tumultu 
horrida  contremuere  sub  altis  aetheris  oris, 
in  dubioque  fuere  utrorum  ad  regna  cadendum 
omnibus  humanis  esset  terraque  marique, 
sic,  ubi  non  erimus,  cum  corporis  atque  animai 
discidium   fuerit  quibus  e  sumus  uniter  apti, 
scilicet  hand  nobis  quicquam,  qui  non  erimus  tum, 
accidere  onniino  poterit  sensumque  movere, 
non  si  terra  mari  miscebitur  et  mare  caelo. 

I  suppose  I  must  try  to  translate  that.  It  is 
of  course  a  passage  of  Luci-etius  (iii.  830-842) 
which  follows  uj)on  an  elaborate  argument  to  prove 
that  death  destroys  personality  and  that  the  soul 
is  not  immortal. 

'  So  death  is  nothing  to  us  and  matters  nothing 
to  us,  since  we  have  proved  that  the  soul  is 
not  immortal.  And  as  in  time  past  we  felt  no  ill, 
when  the  Phoenicians  were  pouring  in  to  battle  on 
every  front,  when  the  world  rocked  with  the  shock 


34        THE   TRAGEDY    OF  GREECE 

and  tumult  of  war  and  shivered  from  centre  to 
firmament,  when  all  mankind  on  sea  and  land  must 
fall  under  the  victor's  empire  and  victory  was  in 
doubt— so,  when  we  have  ceased  to  exist,  when 
bodv  and  soul,  whose  union  is  our  being,  have  been 
})arted,  then  nothing  can  touch  us — we  shall  have 
ceased  to  exist — and  nothing  can  make  us  feel,  no, 
noi  if  earth  is  confounded  with  sea  and  sea  with 
heaven." 

Lucretius  wrote  that  about  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  after  Hannilml  evacuated  Italy,  but  the 
horror  is  still  vivid  in  his  mind,  and  his  poetry 
arouses  it  in  our  minds  as  we  listen.  Personally, 
I  remember  how  those  lines  kept  running  in  my 
head  about  this  time  two  years  ago. 

But  the  victors  suffered  with  the  vanquished  in 
the  common  ruin  of  civilization.  The  whole 
MediteiTanean  world,  and  the  devastated  area  in 
Italy  most  of  all,  was  shaken  by  the  economic  and 
social  revolutions  which  the  Roman  wars  brought 
in  their  train,  llie  proletariat  was  oppressed  to 
such  a  degree  that  the  unity  of  society  was  per- 
manently destroyed  and  Greek  civilization,  after 
being  threatened  with  a  violent  extinction  by 
Bolshevik  outbreaks — the  slave  wars  in  Sicily,  the 
insurrection  of  Aristonikos  and  the  massacres  of 
Mithradates  in  Anatolia,  the  outbreaks  of  Sparta- 
kos  and   Catilina  in    Italy— was  eventually  sup- 


THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE 


35 


planted  by  a  rival  civilization  of  the  proletariat — 
the  Christian  Church.  The  revolutionary  last  phase 
in  the  second  act — the  final  phase  before  the 
foundation  of  the  Empire — has  left  its  expression 
in  the  cry  of  the  Son  of  Man  :  '  The  foxes  have 
holes  and  the  birds  of  the  air  have  nests,  but  the 
Son  of  Man  hath  not  where  to  lay  his  head.'  It 
was  one  of  those  anonymous  phrases  that  are  in 
all  men's  mouths  because  they  express  what  is  in 
all  men's  hearts.  Tiberius  Gracchus  used  it  in  his 
public  speeches  at  Rome;  two  centuries  later  it 
reappears  in  the  discourses  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

Ergo  inter  sese  paribus  concurrei  e  telis 
Romanas  acies  iterum  videre  Philippi, 
nee  fuit  indignum  superis  bis  sanguine  nostro 
Emathiam  et  latos  Haemi  pinguescere  campos  .  .  . 
Di  patrii,  Indigetes,  et  Romule,  Vestaque  mater 
quae  Tuscum  Tiberim  et  Romana  Palatia  servas, 
hunc  saltem  everso  iuvenem  succurrere  saeclo 
ne  prohibete.     satis  iam  pridem  sanguine  nostro 
Laomedonteae  luimus  periuria  Troiae  .  .  . 
vicinae  ruptis  inter  se  legibus  urbes 
arma  ferunt ;  saevit  toto  Mars  impius  orbe  ; 
ut  cum  carceribus  sese  effudere  quadrigae, 
addunt  in  spatio,  et  frustra  retinacula  tendens 
fertur  equis  auriga  neque  audit  currus  habenas. 

(Georgks,  i.  4j89  seqq.) 

'Therefore  Philippi  saw  Roman  armies  turn 
their  swords  against  each  other  a  second  time  in 
battle,  and   the  gods  felt  no   pity  that   Emathia 


36 


THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE 


and  the  broad  plains  of  Haemns  should  twice  be 
fattened  with  our  blood.  .  ,  . 

'  Gods  of  our  fathers,  gods  of  our  country,  god  of 
our  city,  goddess  of  our  hearths  \\  ho  watxihest  over 
Tuscan  Tiber  and  Roman  Palatine,  suffer  this  last 
saviour  to  succour  our  fallen  generation.  Oui- 
})lood  has  flowed  too  long.  We  have  paid  in  full 
for  the  sins  of  our  forefathers — the  broken  faith 
of  ancient  Troy.  .  .  . 

'The  bonds  are  broken  between  neighbour  cities 
and  they  meet  in  arms.  Ungodly  war  rages  the 
world  over.  The  chariots  launched  on  the  race 
gather  speed  as  they  go  ;  the  driver  vainly  draws 
the  reins ;  the  steeds  carry  him  away,  and  the 
team  will  not  answer  to  the  bridle. ' 

It  is  a  prayer  for  the  lifting  of  the  cui*se,  and 
this  time  the  '  envious  and  disordering '  powers 
gave  ear.  The  charioteer  regained  control,  and  we 
are  carried  on  to  the  third  act  of  the  tragedy,  in 
which,  to  my  mind,  no  small  part  of  its  beauty 
and  a  very  great  part  of  its  significance  is  to  l)e 
found.  The  imperial  peace  could  not  save  the 
body  of  Greek  civilization — the  four  centuries  of 
war  had  inflicted  mortal  wounds  ;  but  I  am  not 
sure  that  it  did  not  save  its  soul.  Although 
Augustus  had  not  the  abilities  of  Caesar,  he  felt 
and  pitied  the  son*ows  of  the  world,  and  he  suc- 
ceeded in  expressing  the  pity  and  re[)entance,  the 


THE  TRAGEDY    OF  GREECE       37 

ruthfulness  for  and  piety  towards  the  past,  which 
were  astir  in  the  spirits  of  his  generation.     But  I 
cannot  find  a  phrase  to  characteri/.e  the  Empire. 
The  words  'Decline  and  Fair  suggest  themselves, 
but  how   should  they  be  applied  ?     Gibbon  took 
the  second  century  of  the  Empire,  the  age  of  the 
Antonines,  as   the  Golden   Age  of  the   Ancient 
World,    and    traced  the   decline  and  fall  of  the 
Empire  from  the  death  of  Marcus  Aurelius.     On 
the  other  hand,  if  my  reading  of  the  plot  is  right, 
the  fatal  catastrophe  occurred  six  centuries  earlier, 
in  the  year  4<31  n.  c,  and  the  Empire  itself  was  the 
decline  and  fall  of  Greek  civilization.     But  was  it 
only  that  ?     One  is  apt  to  think  so  when  one  reads 
the  diary  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  pictures  him 
in    his   quarters    at    Carnuntum,    fighting    finely 
but    hopelessly   on   two  fronts- -against  the  bar- 
barians on  the  Danube  and  the  sadness  in  his  own 

soul. 

'  Human  life  !  Its  duration  is  momentary,  its 
substance  in  perpetual  flux,  its  senses  dim,  its 
physical  organism  perishable,  its  consciousness 
a  vortex,  its  destiny  dark,  its  repute  uncertain — 
in  fact,  the  material  element  is  a  rolling  stream, 
the  spiritual  element  dreams  and  vapour,  life  a  war 
and  a  sojourning  in  a  far  country,  fame  oblivion. 
What  can  see  us  through  ?  One  thing  and  one 
onlv — philosophy,   and    that    means   keeping  the 


'■'■:Py'f^~f^iX'P^. ' 


38        THE   TRAGEDY    OF   GREECE 


spirit  within  us  unspoiled  and  undishonoured,  not 
giving  way  to  pleasure  or  pain,  never  acting 
unthinkingly  or  deceitfully  or  insincerely,  and 
never  being  dependent  on  the  moral  support  of 
others.  It  also  means  taking  what  comes  content- 
edly as  all  part  of  the  process  to  which  we  owe 
our  own  being ;  and,  above  all,  it  means  facing 
death  calmly — taking  it  simply  as  a  dissolution  of 
the  atoins  of  which  every  living  organism  is  com- 
posed. Their  perpetual  transformation  does  not 
hurt  the  atoms,  so  why  should  one  mind  the  whole 
organism  being  transformed  and  dissolved  ?  It  is 
a  law  of  nature,  and  natural  law  can  never  be 
wrong/      (MdpKos  *AvT(iivLvo^  eh  lavTov,  ii  fin.) 

But  having  quoted  you  Marcus  Aurelius,  the 
first  citizen  of  the  Empire,  1  am  lx)und  to  add 
a  quotation  from  Paul  of  Tarsos,  a  citizen  who  has 
as  good  a  claim  as  any  other  to  be  heard  : 

' "  How  are  the  dead  raised  up  ?  With  what 
body  do  they  come  ?  ^  Thou  fool,  that  which  thou 
sowest  is  not  quickened,  except  it  die.  ...  It  is 
sown  in  corruption,  it  is  raised  in  incorruption ;  it 
is  sown  in  dishonour,  it  is  raised  in  glory  ;  it  is 
sown  in  weakness,  it  is  raised  in  power. '  .  .  . 

It  startles  us  to  be  reminded  that  these  two 
actors  appeared  on  the  stage  in  the  same  act  of 
the  drama,  and  that  Paul  actually  played  his  part 
a  century  before  Marcus  played  his.      Paul's  voice 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE       39 

suggests  not  only  a  younger  generation  but  quite 
a  different  play.      His  thought  in  the  lines  I  have 
quoted  is  inspired  by  a  predecessor  whom  Marcus 
regarded  as  one  of  the  innumerable  prophets  of 
the  proletariat.     '  Except  a  corn  of  wheat  fall  into 
the  ground  and  die,  it  abideth  alone,  but  if  it  die, 
it  brinireth   forth   much  fruit.'     The  saying   was 
included    in    the    miscellaneous    traditions    about 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  which  wei*e  passing  from  mouth 
to  mouth  among  the  illiterate  masses,  but  which 
had    not    l)egun    to    excite   the   curiosity    of   the 
etlucated  classes  in  Marcus'  day.    What  would  the 
scrholar  have  made  of  it  if  a  collection  of  these 
traditions  had  fallen  under  his  eye,  scrawled  on 
bad  paper  in  barbarous  Greek?     Little  enough, 
for  he  would  have  missed  the  whole  background  of 
his  own  sentiment  and  thought,  which  was  nothing 
less   than  the  background  of  Greek  civilization. 
Great  literary  memories  crowd  the  brief  passage  of 
his  diary  wliich  I  have  quoted  above — Epiktetos 
and  Lucretius  and  the  Stoa,  Plato  and  Sokrates, 
Demokritosand  the  Hippokratean  school  of  medi- 
cine from   which  I   took  my  first  quotation,  and 
simpler  minds  and  more  primitive  artists  in  the 
dim    generations   behind.      We  are  carried  right 
back  through  the  tragedy  at  which  we  have  been 
looking  on.     The  two  men  are  worlds  apart,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  their  propositions,  when  we 


40 


THE  TRAGEDY    OF  GREECE 


strip  them  naketl,  arc  much  the  same.  'The 
oriranism  is  transformed  and  chssolvccL'  '  That 
which  thou  sowest  is  not  quickene<l  except  it  die/ 
They  are  both  representing  death  as  a  pliase  in 
the  process  of  nature,  but  it  is  not  till  we  grasp  the 
similarity  of  the  thought  that  we  fully  realize  the 
difference  in  the  outlook  and  the  emotion. 

Under  the  smooth  surface  of  the  Empire  there 
was  a  great  gulf  fixed  between  the  'bourgeois' 
society  of  the  citv-states  and  the  des<'endants  of 
the  slaves  imported  during  the  Roman  Wars ; 
hut  the  Empire,  by  gradually  alleviating  the 
material  condition  of  the  proletariat,  insensibly 
affected  their  point  of  view.  The  development 
of  their  religion — the  one  inalienable  jM)sscssion 
carried  bv  the  slaves  from  their  Oriental  homes — 
is  an  index  of  the  psychological  change.  In 
the  last  phase  of  the  Second  Act,  the  'Red 
Guards'  of  Sicily  and  Anatolia  had  l)een  led  by 
j)rophets  and  preachers  of  their  Oriental  gcnls. 
Their  relitrion  had  lent  itself  to  their  revolutionary 
state  of  mind.  But  under  the  Empire,  as  de- 
scendants of  the  plantation-slaves  succeeded  in 
purchasing  their  freedom  and  forming  a  new  class 
of  shopkeepers  and  clerks,  their  religion  corre- 
spondingly reflected  their  rise  in  the  world.  They 
remained  indifferent,  if  not  hostile,  to  the  Imperial 
Hellenic  tradition,  but  they  began  to  aspire  to  a 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   GREECE        41 


kingdom  of  their  own  in  this  world  as  well  as 
in  the  next.  The  force  which  had  broken  out 
desperately  in  the  crazy  wonder-working  of  Eunous 
of  Enna  and  had  then  inspired  the 'other-worldly' 
exaltation  of  Paul  of  Tarsos,  was  soon  conducted 
into  the  walls  of  chapels,  and  the  local  associations 
of  Christian  chapel-goers  were  steadily  linked  up 
into  a  federation  so  powerfully  organized  that  the 
Imperial  fetleration  of  city-states  had  eventually 
to  choose  between  going  into  |)artnershij)  with  it 
or  being  supplanted.  Thus  the  empire  of  which 
Marcus  and  Paul  were  citizens  was  more  than  the 
third  act  in  the  tragedy  of  Ancient  Greece.  While 
it  retanled  the  inevitable  dissolution  of  one  civiliza- 
tion it  conceived  its  successor,  and  when,  after 
Marcus'  death,  imj)erial  statesmanship  failed,  and 
the  ancient  organism  long  preserved  by  its  skill  at 
last  broke  down,  the  shock  did  not  extinguish  new 
and  old  together,  but  brought  the  new  life  to 
birth.  By  the  seventh  century  after  Christ,  when 
Ancient  Greek  civilization  may  be  said  finally  to 
have  dissolved,  our  own  civilization  was  ready  to 
'shoot  up  and  thrive"  and  rejjeat  the  tragedy  of 
mankind. 

I  can  Ixist  express  my  jx^Tsonal  feeling  about 
the  Empire  in  a  parable.  It  was  like  the  sea 
round  whose  shores  its  network  of  city-states  was 
strunir.     The  Mediterranean  seems  at  fii-st  sight 


42      THE    TRAGEDY   OF  GREECE 

a  poor  substitute  for  the  rivers  that  have  given 
their   waters   to    make    it.      Those   were    living 
waters,  whether  they  ran   muddy  or  clear  ;   the 
sea  seems  just  salt  and  still  and  dead.     But  as 
soon  as  we  study  the  sea,  we  find  movement  and 
life  there  also.     There  are  silent  currents  circu- 
lating perpetually  from  one  part  to  another,  and 
the  surface-water  that  seems  to  be  lost  by  evapora- 
tion is  not  really  lost,  but  will  descend  in  distant 
places  and  seasons,  with  its  bitterness  all  distilled 
away,  as  life-giving  rain.     And  as  these  surface- 
waters  are  drawn  off  into  the  clouds,  their  place 
is  taken  by  lower  layers  continually  rising  from 
the  depths.     The   sea  itself  is  in   constant    and 
creative   motion,  but  the  influence  of  this  great 
l)ody  of  water  extends  far  l)eyond  its  shores.     One 
finds   it   softening  the  extremes  of  temperature, 
(|uickening  the  vegetation,  and  prospering  the  life 
of  animals    and    men,    in    the    distant    heart    of 
continents    and  among   jHioples   that   have   never 
heard  its  name. 


Printed  in  England  at  the  Oxtord  University  Press 


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